鉋 Kanna: The Japanese Plane

[Chris Hall]

This promises to be a long thread as compared to the chisels. Planes have their maker's name or mark, and on top of that are named, often using poetic allusions.

First up is something you will see on most plane blades, along with larger chisels - the kanji which say that the 'trademark is registered":　商標登録, read shō-hyō-tō-roku.

Sometimes this 4-character compound is shortened to just 商標 (shō-hyō) or 登録 (tō-roku).

The first character, 登, stems from a pictograph, shown at the bottom of this post, consisting of an elliptical food stand (豆), a pair of hands holding an object up high (廾), and an element on top (癶) which is a pair of feet depicted spread apart. Put altogether, you have a character, 登, which suggests raise something high in offering, nowadays meaning promote.

The second character, 録, read 'roku', consists of metal (金) on the left side, and '彔' on the right, and element coming from a pictograph showing curls of peeled bamboo scattered right and left in being pared. Together, these elements combine to form '録', meaning pare away the outer layer of bronzeware in making inscriptions, which has come to mean inscribe; record in the present.

The pairing of these two characters as '登録', means: registration; accession; register; entry; record

That pair of characters is read tō-roku. Below is an example, on one of the blacksmith Chiyozuru's (千代鶴) plane blades - spot the kanji saying tō-roku at the upper right of the blade in the first picture.

In the second picture, we see a blade in which the first two characters 商標, shō-hyō, meaning 'trademark', are used only.

[yanai]

here is a shot of a japanese plane i just picked up here. it's got a lot of superficial oxidation, but the blade is still in good shape (blue steel) and it's being worked on right now, but i got it for a bottle of suntory whiskey. can't beat that price.

anyone have any ideas on the maker? the rust actually makes it a little easier to read. ; /

[Chris Hall]

Well, I can't quite make out the kanji stamped on the right side, but on the left there is 別打, "betsu-uchi", which means specially forged.